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Printed letters, December 28, 2010

While the news on our economic recovery has not been great, clean energy has been doing its part to create jobs and clean our environment. Despite this success, a critical federal incentive for renewable energy such as wind and solar, an incentive that helped over 90 job-creating projects get off the ground in Colorado, was nearly dropped this year.

Thanks to the leadership and hard work of both Colorado senators and Reps, Diana DeGette, John Salazar, Jared Polis and Betsy Markey, this program was extended for a year in the tax package. We will see more projects like the Mor-Storage project in Grand Junction that received over $107,000.

In order to continue the growth of clean, renewable energy and to maintain and create tens of thousands of jobs, the renewable energy industries, environmental community, labor movement and others joined champions in the House and Senate, including both Colorado’s senators and four representatives, in a tremendous push to extend these wind and solar incentives.

Coloradans were lucky this month to have true renewable-energy champions looking out for their clean air, environment and their jobs.

DANA HOFFMAN

Energy Associate Environment Colorado Denver

Arms treaty more proof of Obama’s intentions

I must respoond to New York Times columnist Gail Collins’ recent column. She thinks a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviets is deserving of highest praise. She and other utopians still do not see any danger or evil in the world.

When have the Russians ever abided by an arms treaty? Isn’t this the same regime that supplies Iran with weapons and nuclear materials?

She says that President Obama knows exactly what he is doing. I couldn’t agree more. He is determined to wipe out a generation of patriots, the generation that grew up in an America they knew and loved.

Yes, he removed the death counselors from the health care bill, but he has slipped it into Medicare. Since our youth are already under the thumb of the National Education Association, the rest should be easy.

Yes, indeed, get rid of senior citizens so their Social Security can be given to illegals who will vote with the socialists. Make this entire country into a nation of sheep who will bow down to Big Daddy government.

Gloat, Gail, gloat!

CAROL ABBOTT Parachute

Salazar’s rule will protect important wildlife habitat

Seven years ago, former Interior Secretary Gale Norton used an unprecedented interpretation of federal law (dubbed the “no more wilderness” policy) to remove federal protections from 500,000 acres of BLM lands in Colorado and millions more across the West that were under consideration for wilderness designation, making them vulnerable to activities such as mining and drilling. These generally low-elevation public lands are important winter range for mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep and other species.

Recently, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reversed Norton’s flawed policy. Sportsmen’s groups such as the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and others support Salazar’s action because it will help protect dwindling big-game and other wildlife habitat that’s being decimated by oil and gas drilling on public lands across the West.

The BLM oversees about 8.4 million acres in Colorado, so there are plenty of other public lands that could be leased for mining, oil and gas drilling, or used for off-road recreation. The same is true of other states, where the proportion of land available for such uses far outstrips the acreage that could be protected.

BLM holdings are often considered the “land that nobody wanted.” During the great homestead period, settlers took choice valley bottoms and ignored the ridges and mountain slopes. Today these ridges and slopes are superb big game country. Let’s keep it that way.